The lategame itchiness

[Minuro]

First of all, I want to clarify that I am not a hater; I love Stellaris and although some may disagree, I like the way it is going and I think that is giving it more variety and content.
That said, I want to share a feeling that I have always had, because I don't know if I am the only one that happens, or is that the game fails in some way.
In early and part of mid, I am able to take things much more calmly than in late game, in which almost everything seems irrelevant. It sounds stupid, but I just can't identify why I have this feeling. It may be because as the game progresses, when you have plenty of resources, everything matters less to you; you build more districts at once, you buy more things, you expand faster, and the events that give you resources are not as important as they used to be.

Does anyone else have this feeling?

 

[Liggi]

I kinda see what you mean. I think at some point it just becomes about spamming as big a fleet as you can possibly muster, and then just kinda going around the map fighting the crisis or whatever.

 

[Pancakelord]

I'd call it fatigue rather than itchiness. There are really only 2 sources of challenge in the game

• The AI (which isn't much of a challenge after you've toppled 1 empire in a game - without AI mods)
• Economic scarcity (which goes away with various tech modifiers and planet development)

After that, all you've got left is deciding who to absorb and how many times you want to spam 'build district' / 'build clone army' / 'build neutron torpedo ship'.

Until an adequate midgame challenge loop appears (forcing you to divert resources in to fighting civil wars, plagues, intra-politics, hedonism/decadence, pop political power shifts, inflation, whatever), runaway late game growth will always be an issue. As there is nowhere else to invest in/finance, but factories and tech for expansion - and the galaxy often isn't big enough or strong enough for you, to remain interesting, by the time lategame arrives (and bringing lategame forwards dodges the issue, but doesn't address it).

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Even from an RP perspective all the interesting stuff the things that really change how you play, are over after a third Ascension pick which will finish your chosen path, and a third civic selection after which unless you become the Galactic Empire there's no need to change civics.

In a genre characterized by vast gulfs of time Stellar is manages to happen too quickly (a default game is perhaps 500 years) and too slowly (It takes multiple years for a fleet to move from one edge of a large galaxy to the other), 500 years is too short to plausibly reach the heights of the fallen empires, also too long to have so little happen in terms of social change and cultural development.

 

[Ryika]

For me it's more an existential dread that slowly creeps in as the game goes on. There is almost always a point where I start wondering why I'm even playing the game, because it just doesn't go anywhere. The moment I outscale the galaxy, the "fantasy" breaks down, and what I'm left with is the purely mechanical nature of the gameplay, and that is, as it has always been, rather boring and very repetitive, with considerably less character than the rest of the game. That's the moment I wonder, have I just wasted 6 hours of my life just to arrive in this scenario again? I didn't, of course, waste these 6 hours, because I had a lot of fun during the first half of the game, but it just doesn't lead anywhere.

That's why I was originally so happy about the new economy system. It has enough depth to simulate "a society" on top of it, and the possibilities of what could be down with it seemed endless. But 2.2 has been out for nearly 3 years now, and the devs are still fixing the economy and every major dlc seems to add features that are mostly fluff that don't meaningfully evolve the core gameplay at all.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

if it's itchy you have to scratchy

seriously, in comparison to eu4 and hoi4 stellaris has got an excellent end-game crisis system, which is actually fun and even realistic (or at least an immersive scifi) and not meme-ish like having aztecs invade europe in ck2

though more content is always better, so i hope for another engaging story packs

 

[Louella]

There's definitely a bit in the game where I can colonise a bunch of new planets, set them up with a build queue that would take years, and then basically just ignore them for 10-15 years.

Whereas just a relatively few ingame years earlier, I'd have to be constantly adjusting things, as new buildings are researched.

 

[malakhglitch]

I believe the term you are looking for is ennui.